What role has Jewish intellectual culture played in the development of modern Romance literature? Susanne Zepp seeks to answer this question through an examination of five influential early modern texts written between 1499 and 1627: Fernando de Rojas's La Celestina, Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore, the anonymous tale Lazarillo de Tormes (the first picaresque novel), Montaigne's Essais, and the poetical renditions of the Bible by João Pinto Delgado. Forced to straddle two cultures and religions, these Iberian conversos (Jews who converted to Catholicism) prefigured the subjectivity which would come to characterize modernity. As "New Christians" in an intolerant world, these thinkers worked within the tensions of their historical context to question norms and dogmas. In the past, scholars have focused on the Jewish origins of such major figures in literature and philosophy. Through close readings of these texts, Zepp moves the debate away from the narrow question of the authors' origins to focus on the innovative ways these authors subverted and transcended traditional genres. She interprets the changes that took place in various literary genres and works of the period within the broader historical context of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, demonstrating the extent to which the development of early modern subjective consciousness and its expression in literary works can be explained in part as a universalization of originally Jewish experiences.

This volume explores perceptions of the "Jewish body" in variety of early modern Jewish sources. It discusses, among other topics, ideas of the ideal body in normative sources, the influence of Kabbalistic ideas on Jewish-Christian discourse and the link between melancholy and exile.

The Italian Emblem: A Collection of Essays is the twelfth in the series 'Glasgow Emblem Studies'. This volume is linked to a project for the study and digitization of Italian emblem books held in the Stirling Maxwell Collection (Glasgow), financed by the Sixth EU Framework Programme for activities in the field of research. It aims at exploring the history, forms, themes of the Italian emblem tradition, with particular attention to sixteenth-century emblem books and their open, multifaceted, and metamorphic nature. To capture this nature, the volume includes contributions from different disciplines, ranging from literature to history of art and political philosophy, supplied by the following distinguished scholars: Guido Arbizzoni (University of Urbino 'Carlo Bo'), Monica Calabritto (Hunter College, CUNY), Giuseppe Cascione (University of Bari), Sonia Maffei (University of Bergamo), Anna Maranini (University of Bologna), Liana de Girolami Cheney (University of Massachusetts Lowell), Silvia Volterrani (CTL-Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa). French text.

Those interested in the concept of ecstasy would be forgiven for assuming that a sober scholastic like St. Thomas Aquinas had little place for the idea. Yet in this groundbreaking study, sure to refine our understanding of the Angelic Doctor, Peter Kwasniewski shows that St. Thomas contemplates the nature of ecstasy at key stages in the development of his thought and that it plays a crucial role in his doctrine of love. After a stimulating study of treatments of ecstasy in ancient philosophy, Sacred Scripture, and the medieval tradition prior to Aquinas, Kwasniewski finds that he can be seen as breathing new life into the concept. While his contemporary, St. Bonaventure, for example, tended to restrict ecstasy to the soul’s union with God, St. Thomas admitted the place of ecstasy in a variety of human activities. Furthermore, St. Thomas recognized that all love involves ecstatic transcendence, whether it be the creature’s self-oblation to the Creator, the reverence of an inferior for a superior, a superior’s generosity toward an inferior, or the mutual affection and help of equals joined in friendship. Love of persons for their own sake generates an ecstatic love in which the self is borne as a gift to another subject by sharing a common life aspiring to common goods. Kwasniewski also examines Aquinas on the question of whether or not God experiences ecstasy, and if so, in what ways. The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the doctrine of love and to the interpretation of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is more than an analysis of key texts; it is an illuminating guide to the grammar of ecstasy.

An examination of ideas and ideals of medieval courtly love and the transition into later Romantic love, analyzing the work of Dante, Shakespeare, and Schopenhauer, among many others. Review), "monumental" (Boston Globe), "one of the major works of philosophy in our century" (Nous), "wise and magisterial" (Times Literary Supplement), and a "masterpiece of critical thinking [that] is a timely, eloquent, and scrupulous account of what, after all, still makes the world go round" (Christian Science Monitor). In the second volume, Singer studies the ideas and ideals of medieval courtly love and nineteenth-century Romantic love, as well as the transition between these two perspectives. According to the traditions of courtly love in the twelfth century and thereafter, not only God but also human beings in themselves are capable of authentic love. The pursuit of love between man and woman was seen as a splendid ideal that ennobles both the lover and the beloved. It was something more than libidinal sexuality and involved sophisticated and highly refined courtliness that emulated religious love in its ability to create a holy union between the participants. Adherents to Romantic love in later centuries, affirmed the capacity of love to effect a merging between two people who thus became one. Singer analyzes the transition from courtly to Romantic by reference to the writings of many artists beginning with Dante and ending with Richard Wagner, as well as Neoplatonist philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, Descartes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. In relation to romanticism itself, he distinguishes between two aspects—"benign romanticism" and "Romantic pessimism"—that took on renewed importance in the twentieth century.

Anteros: A Forgotten Myth explores how the myth of Anteros disappears and reappears throughout the centuries, from classical Athens to the present day, and looks at how the myth challenges the work of Freud, Lacan, and Jung, among others. It examines the successive cultural experiences that formed and inform the myth and also how the myth sheds light on individual human experience and the psychoanalytic process. Topics of discussion include: Anteros in the Italian Renaissance, the French Enlightenment and English Modernism psychologizing Anteros: Freud, Lacan, Girard, and Jung three anterotic moments in a consulting room. This book presents an important argument at the boundaries of the disciplines of analytical psychology, psychoanalysis, art history, and mythology. It will therefore be essential reading for all analytical psychologists and psychoanalysts as well as art historians and those with an interest in the meeting of psychoanalytic thought and mythology.